But he remained distressingly European through it all.  The White Hussars were ‘My dear true friends,’ ‘Fellow-soldiers glorious,’ and ’Brothers inseparable.’  He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their hearts and their territories should run side by side and the great mission of civilising Asia should begin.  That was unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West.  There is too much Asia and she is too old.  You cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime.  She will never attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords for tickets.

Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could.  Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about his own sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond.  He had done rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of his years.  But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of Her Majesty’s White Hussars.  And indeed they were a regiment to be admired.  When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors already married, she was not going to content herself with one hussar.  Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature contradictious; and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach.  She had jilted them all—­from Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the junior subaltern, who could have given her four thousand a year and a title.

The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan.  They had once met the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled them with prejudice.  They even called the White Hussars children of the devil and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet in decent society.  Yet they were not above making their aversion fill their money-belts.  The regiment possessed carbines—­beautiful Martini-Henri carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy’s camp at one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle.  Therefore they were coveted all along the border, and since demand